Barnes Powers Paintings By Deliberation

May 08, 1992|By Alan G. Artner, Art critic.

Robert Barnes` recent paintings, at the Struve Gallery, 309 W. Superior St., represent a dramatic departure from the way in which the artist long has worked.

Normally, Barnes does not create preparatory studies for paintings or mental outlines for themes. He had proceeded more spontaneously, allowing images to take shape directly on the canvas as he had gradually closed in on his subject, much in the way a zoom lens would isolate a figure in a crowd.

This time, however, for the five largest paintings on show, Barnes moved forward more carefully, settling on themes in advance and monitoring the development of each 7-by-6-foot canvas through a process of editing that evaluated and expunged any image he thought a cliche as he worked.

Barnes` themes are ``Sources of Power``: physical strength, sexuality, beauty, knowledge and wealth. His method presents them in allegories or, as he has written, ``the plastic equivalents for the mystery plays of the middle ages.``

As always with the artist, his works embody a remarkable amount of learning and all sorts of curious lore. But at no point do the paintings become mere illustrations, for Barnes is strict about keeping a balance between their formal patterns and the stories they tell.

Moreover, his loose paint handling creates passages that, at first glance, seem to be purely abstract but are not. Each canvas has such passages, revealing themselves slowly and seldom completely. They are gestures that move between abstraction and representation but give only hints of objects one thinks one knows before swinging back in the opposite direction.

The artist unravels his symbolism in fairly lengthy wall labels that underline the literary quality of the work. That quality often has been suspect in contemporary art, yet it is almost impossible for a viewer to judge it sternly when the means of conveyance are as seductive as they are here.

(Through May 30.)

THOMAS HART BENTON (Aaron, 620 N. Michigan Ave.): Benton`s most famous paintings, of loud and unremitting folksiness, have heightened color that occasionally makes up for the stylizations of his drawing. However, in most of these works on paper, Benton`s writhing line is much to the fore, with little chromatic compensation.

The exhibition includes none of the work he did while under the influence of the early modern movements of Cubism and Synchromism. Here he clearly fulfills the self-created image of cranky old hayseed, and if one can stomach the pieties some pleasure is to be had.

Benton`s voice sounded more vigorously than that of the other members of the Regionalist triumvirate, John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood. His work has a more abrasive quality than the equivalent urban art of the period. But it still communicates something as essential to the American Experience as the machine-and-skyscraper esthetic of Art Deco.

At its best, Benton`s drawing has a roiling vitality that makes it hard to resist. His figures are never entirely convincing but, even at rest, they seethe and wriggle in evocations of Michelangelo and the Hellenistic marble group called the Laocoon.

Benton`s landscapes are less successful, as are-surprisingly-the pieces that look like newspaper illustrations. (Through June 27.)